'Change For Change's Sake Doesn't Always Equal Progress'

If you constantly change your to-do app, route to work or line at the supermarket, you probably know that at some point you're just spinning your wheels. Have an end goal in mind whenever you make a change to ensure progress.

It's good to make changes in different areas of your life. Maybe you're getting out of a rut, or your comfort zone. Just be sure that when you change, you have a clear objective in mind, otherwise the changes you make could be unnecessary.

Time Management Ninja explains:

If you are constantly changing your time management tools, routines, and habits, you can prevent yourself from ever reaching a steady efficient state.

This concept not only applies to individuals, but also to businesses. They mistake change for improvement, and that is not always the case.

"Change for change sake does not always result in progress."

And while I am a big advocate of leaving your comfort zone, too much change can result in confusion, disorganisation and lack of competence.

So, next time you want to make a change, ask yourself why you're doing it first.

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Comments

We periodically have mildly offensive things gracing our department's intranet home page. Sometimes it's just an offense against good taste, such as exhorting employees to use the internal social network 'Yammer' by posting a picture of the director's face on top of M.C. Hammer. "STOP! Yammer Time."

Most recently, the offensive image was actually kind of insulting. It was a diorama of some lego characters pulling a cart with a triangular wheel, waving off someone with a circular wheel, telling him in captions, "Sorry, we're too busy to innovate!"

That image WOULD have a point if the last ten years of 'innovation' attempts hadn't been full of pointless time-costing measures, with more change for the sake of change than actual productivity improvement. As it is, that image displayed a completely tone-deaf ignorance of the very reasonable wariness of supposed improvements coming in under the same 'innovation' banner as the colossal failures that came before it. Once bitten, twice shy.

More often than not, change for the sake of change is very closely related to someone new in a position of power wanting to make their mark. …Or mark their territory.

Even at its most benign, the attitude of, "I'm here! Watch me make things better because obviously my predecessors didn't have my same level of drive and intelligence!" is more than just a little naive, borderline arrogant.

This does seem to be a common situation; ego-driven managers try to imprint the business with their own, ahem, 'innovations' that are - by virtue of their source - intrinsically better than every previous idea. Ever.

Such mentality often leads to The Master Plan To Fix Everything (tm) in their head being applied before they've even looked at the issues.

Problem : round pegs are a little loose in the round holes.
Solution : "Square holes! I implemented square holes at my last position; it'll work unless you mess it up."

I appreciate that some (let's euphemistically call them 'driven') people justifiably believe in themselves and their ability to see the forest etc.
However, it's my experience that this isn't always the case and sometimes the tress are the forest.

Have to go lie down for a while, may have sprained my metaphor gland...